Friday, April 4, 2008

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WAIVERS PAVE WAY FOR DEVASTATING BORDER WALL: LETTER TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

This letter was signed by over 25 human rights and environmental groups and activists, as well as border residents and concerned U.S. citizens.

April 1, 2008 was the beginning of a very sad time for millions of us on the border, in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, and throughout the U.S. The Bush administration issued two waivers on April 1 that circumvent dozens of U.S. environmental and other laws to pave the way for wall construction to begin immediately on the Texas border, and to continue on the New Mexico, Arizona and California borders.

With such an action, spearheaded by DHS Secretary Chertoff, the Federal Government shows a major failure to work and consult with border communities on the wall issue. Clearly, Chertoff is flexing his muscle upon the border residents. Instead of dialogue and consultation we, at the border, will receive imposition and unconstitutionality.

We on the border know that a wall won't work, and that it is not a real solution. Many others know this also. We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, are trying to educate the public and elected officials about how the wall and militarization of the border will profoundly impact the wildlife, the environment, our river and the lives and rights of people on both sides of the border. The executive branch of our government and the U.S. Congress, by their actions, do not seem to care about any of that.

We believe that Americans must realize before it is too late that their government is wasting taxpayer money in building an 18-foot-high barrier along sections of the border, as well as in increasing the militarization of the border communities, in a vain attempt to close the border.

In three Texas counties, DHS intends to combine walls with the existing flood control levees. By building this structure before it has been thoroughly evaluated for safety and effectiveness, DHS is recklessly endangering lives and property of border residents in these areas.

We all now must endure an unimaginably difficult time during which our nation's fears are manifested in an ancient, ugly form -- a wall –- and manifested even more by increased militarization. In China, Berlin, Israel, Palestine and Northern Ireland, WALLS DIDN'T WORK. They definitely don't work in the U.S. either. They, primarily, decimate human rights and show intolerance and rejection. They kill hundreds of people annually in the U.S. because they drive people crossing the border to walk through more remote areas of desert where many then die of dehydration and exposure.

After lessons are learned, most walls are taken down. Thereafter, the wall builders are ridiculed, if they are acknowledged at all. Walls have failed to keep people out (or in) but, however, have damaged both human and riparian habitat permanently.

The Rio Grande is a very sacred and special place, with several wildlife refuges that will be devastated by a wall. In New Mexico, California, and Arizona, there are many special and sacred places along the border, including wildlife refuges and tribal lands, where a wall has already been built, unbeknownst to most Americans. Many of us have lived, farmed, and ranched along the border for generations. We urge the American public to hold on to images of the border, its people, and the environment as worth protecting, and to keep in mind that the wall is temporary because it was born of a failed policy.

We the undersigned ask Americans not to let a wall divide our border community. Even though the executive branch of the current administration has exercised undue power to bring about the construction, we the people must call, write and organize to stop the wall. If it is built, we must demand that it be taken down. We ask the American public to keep foremost in their minds the fact that the border area encompasses one community that includes both sides.

By our actions and our words, we must hold to peace along the border. Compassion, understanding and hope must inform the struggle that is by necessity taking place on many levels right now along the U.S.-Mexico border. We demand that our border communities not be devastated by a wall and by militarization.

We will not remain silent as our country's constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms and even its laws are swept aside in the name of greed, fear and anti-immigrant fervor under the guise of "improving national security." Our country was founded on Constitutional protections as well as immigration, both of which are historically the very basis of what makes us American.

Americans need to wake up to the fact that signs of tyranny and imposition now exist in the United States of America, in the form of a Cabinet member, Michael Chertoff, who is allowed to use his legislatively-granted power to waive all U.S. law in order to implement a failed anti-immigrant policy. That cannot be allowed to go on any longer.

We the undersigned ask that Americans write their Congressional Representatives as well as their President and demand that the impacts of wall-building and militarization of the border be fully studied and fully acknowledged, and that humane, affordable, wise and workable solutions be found and implemented instead.